Nokia N9 on pre-order in Australia

We seem to be getting closer and closer to the launch date of the Nokia N9 – the phone has now gone on pre-order in Australia.

Online electronics retailer Harvey Norman is selling the phone sim-free for $829 (which is approximately £542) for 16GB, or you can pay $979 (£640) for the 64GB version.

This certainly isn’t cheap, but it’s not far off the price you’ll pay for the Apple iPhone 4 which costs £428 for 8GB and £510 for £16GB.

There’s no actual date the phone will be launched, but the phone is being shipped with a free Nokia headset.

Since it was originally launched earlier this year, we’ve heard a wealth of rumours about when it will be landing. Most recently the European launch was pegged for September 15th from Orange Switzerland.

There’s still no news on whether the phone will be coming to Europe, the UK was missed off from the ‘Check Availability’ list, apparently because Nokia wants to focus on Windows Phone 7 in Western Europe.

We’ve said this before, but we really hope the Nokia N9 comes to the UK. It’s the most exciting phone Nokia has made in a long time.

Fashioned from a single piece of polycarbonate (not aluminium like the N950) without a single button and with a 3.9-inch Super AMOLED screen it’s a stunning piece of design. Check out our Nokia N9 hands-on pictures here.

But it’s the operating system we’re really interested in. It’s the first commercially available handset to run Meego, with three homescreens: Multitasking, News feed and Menu. Elsewhere there’s an 8-megapixel camera, which can also can capture 720p HD videos.

There’s still no news if the Nokia N9 will ever come to the UK, but we’ll let you know if this changes.

Via: Engadget